


elpis lost prototype

by leosorrel



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Loss of Identity, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2019-10-31 00:42:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17839142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leosorrel/pseuds/leosorrel
Summary: This is being rewritten! Please look for the new work titled Elpis Lost!"He ran, trying to escape before they hunt him down, string him up by his ankles and make him pay for crimes he hadn’t committed. Because nobody knew Timothy Lawrence. They only knew his face. They only knew Handsome Jack."---A collection of one-shots following Timothy's attempts to find a new life when all hope is lost.@elpislost on tumblr.





	1. the monster is back in town

He sneaked through the shadows of the white cliffs on the way to the small town of Overlook. It was well into the night, the only sounds were his own footsteps and the screeching of stalkers as they chased their next meal.

In the distance he saw the windows of the Holy Spirits pub, all lit up, foggy outlines passing by as the people inside drank the night away. A bit to the right - the floating city of Sanctuary basked in the glow of the starry sky and the eerie red glow of Pandora’s moon, Elpis.

Once the space station Helios had towered above all, emitting its cold and uncaring blue glow across the land, as a testament of Handsome Jack’s overwhelming ego. But that time had passed. It now lay in ruins somewhere far away, and old Hyperion bases had become the dwelling grounds of man and beast. As the wreckage that burned up in the atmosphere, so did Timothy Lawrence’s chances of integrating into society. When you wear the face of the most hated man in the nearest universe, not many people would ask you questions before shooting you point blank with a corrosive shotgun. No, he only had his one way ticket into isolation and obscurity. 

But he couldn’t stay away for ever. He wanted to talk to people. He wanted to see a familiar face, hell, he’d even agree to see Wilhelm now - and he was really afraid of Wilhelm. Or have Nisha pick on him, or even sit in the other corner of the room as Athena pretended that he didn’t exist. He didn’t want to hide anymore. But, there was no other choice, was there?

So now he crept through the Highlands, wrapped up in the shadows, his face obscured by a ragged piece of cloth, avoiding anyone who could recognize him. He’d established contact with someone in the Zafford clan. They exchanged notes, and Timothy left him cash in exchange for a crate of whiskey. This was the third batch that week, and though it smelled like skag piss, it was a way for him to forget. In the back of his mind he knew that this new habit of his would be deadly, but he pretended he didn’t care.

Gravel shifted underneath his boots, stinging his heel - another pebble had gotten through the holes in his soles. He wasn’t far now, he only had to pass the stalker lair known locally as Hunter’s Bane, and he’d be right there, a new letter and a crate of booze waiting for him.

Something was off. The stalkers had fallen silent.

A high pitched scream.

“Help!”

Timothy rushed over to the ledge to Hunter’s Bane. A young man was surrounded by three stalkers, one of them had its teeth clamped around the man’s arm, and the other two were sniffing him, as the poor sod tried to keep them away.

Three gunshots later Timothy was kneeling down next to the man, who cradled his torn up arm while wailing. Timothy stabbed the exposed limb with a syringe of Heal Now! while pinning the man down.  
“Thank you…” the man muttered once the medicine had begun to work. Tears sprung into Timothy’s eyes. After several years of silence, the first thing that he heard was gratitude. His heart swelled up, and he answered.

“No problem.”

And then his heart sunk to the bottom of his stomach.

In the light of the stars he saw the man’s face twist in horror. No, not the “Oh my god, I’m being eaten alive by a stinking leather bag”, but the “Oh my god, the devil is talking to me” kind of horror.

For a few seconds they stared at each other, before scrambling to their feet and bolting away in opposite directions. He could hear the man screaming in the distance.

“Handsome Jack! Alive! Help!”

The tears began to stream down Timothy’s face as he ran, and turned into sobs. His throat hurt as the voice modulator malfunctioned. He ran, trying to escape, before they hunt him down, string him up by his ankles and make him pay for crimes he hadn’t committed. Because nobody knew Timothy Lawrence. They only knew his face. They only knew Handsome Jack.


	2. hole in my head

His calloused fingertips traced the barrel of the gun. A Jacobs revolver he’d picked up some months ago in the Dust from the rotting corpse of some bandit. It had served him well, gotten him out of a few tough spots on his way to the Highlands. Today it would serve him one last time.

He was going to kill himself and take Handsome Jack along with him. He, and only he will get to put the last bullet in that bastard’s face. He’d taken away his life, his identity, and if Timothy couldn’t take it back, he’d erase the last bits himself. On his own terms.

He had hoped that nobody would have believed the injured man, chalking up his claims of Handsome Jack being alive as adrenaline fueled hallucinations. He’d really hoped it would pass…

Three Vault Hunters were circling his hideout like vultures. 

Timothy had holed up in a cave at Lake “Shining Horizons”, by the bridge to Opportunity. There was a cave behind the waterfall that could only be accessed by boat, and he’d only discovered it after frantically trying to swim away from a thresher during his first night in the Highlands. It had been his home ever since. The empty huts were tempting, but they were exposed to anyone who passed by. His house wasn’t warm or comfortable, his spare clothes had began to acquire mold after being stashed in a rather wet corner, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

Though, it wouldn’t matter soon.

He pressed his forehead against the cold wall, his ears filling with the sound of water crashing down and his own blood rushing through his veins. For someone about to kill themselves, he was calm. Too calm. Paralyzed even. 

On the other side of the waterfall he could see the muddled shape of a person standing up. Boots clicked against the metal platform. A Vault Hunter, looking through the empty stashes in the hut, looking for him like he was a loot midget.

They’d never find him alive. He didn’t want them to.

They had every right to shoot him on sight, and they had every right to tie him up, parade him through Pandora as the last ghost of Hyperion and then dispose of him in a grand show, if they wished so. He was a Hyperion goon, after all. He’d served Handsome Jack. Hell, he was Handsome Jack, as far as he could tell on most days.

But on the other hand, he wasn’t Jack. Not at all. Once, a long time ago, he’d said it to the man himself.

_I’m not you, Jack._

“I’m not you, Jack.” he croaked, the voice modulator malfunctioning and sending a jolt of electricity through him, as if Jack had punched him in the throat even from the other side of the grave.

His fingers curled around the handle of the gun, knuckles turning white as he began to shake from anger and fear. The cold metal touched his temple… And then he dropped the gun. It clanked against the stone a few times, the noise echoing through the cave. Timothy didn’t care. He wanted the world to hear him one last time, before he wiped Jack from the universe.

He took a knife out of his pocket, cut his left palm without even wincing and smeared the blood on the wall in front, shaping three letters, before grabbing the gun again, pressing it against his head and pulling the trigger.

 

He was on the damp floor.  
A blue light blinded him.

“You think the logical / Thing to do right now is to / Kill yourself, my friend?” an unfamiliar voice said to him. He didn’t answer, only turned his head to the side to look at the wall of the cave.

His own blood spelled out “Tim.”


	3. do your worst

He would have never thought that being strapped to a human-sized dartboard in a shooting range of a gun shop would have been the most comfortable place he’d been in a long while, but here he was, feeling quite content with his situation. After several years of living in skag shit piles, any heated building felt like a luxury, even if he was hanging a few inches above the ground on a board covered in dry blood.

Then again, he did have three different guns pointing at him, and the people pointing them looked at him like Timothy was the skag pile in the room. 

He blinked a few times, his sight fuzzy. He’d woken up like this some minutes ago, already suspended above ground. Across from him were three Vault Hunters. Two of them he knew from Hyperion posters - Brick and Mordecai. 

Brick was a large, burly man, and his fists were about the size of Timothy’s head. He looked like Timothy’s presence made him have a terrible toothache. He didn’t blame him.

Mordecai was a polar opposite - small and scrawny. Even Timothy, who was malnourished, had more meat on his bones. Mordecai looked like a toy skeleton puppet, the kind you would tug by strings to make it do silly dances… Only he had a gun. He couldn’t see Mordecai’s eyes underneath his glasses, but the man hadn’t moved for ten solid minutes, clutching a rifle in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other.

In between them was a tall, dark figure. Timothy couldn’t tell who - what - they were. He only knew that it - they - had four fingers on both hands and his face was a display. He didn’t feel like he was in the position to speculate, even if his tongue was aching to make a very Jack-like quip about it.

_No, you are not Jack. Keep your mouth shut._

The dark figure stood there, their arms crossed, their face displaying three red dots, like a loading screen and they were clutching something in their hand. Timothy couldn’t tell what it was. Probably a weapon. It was always weapons on Pandora, just like it had been on Elpis.

The door in the further end of the room sprung open and a red-haired woman walked in backwards, talking to someone in the other room.

“Marcus, you’ve got vending machines in every shit hole across the planet! We aren’t hurting your business, this won’t take long!” she said to Marcus, and the only answer she got back was an anguished groan.

“Alright,” she turned around on her heels, pressing her hands into her hips, her stare burning through his skin like a pair of flamethrowers. He knew who she was. She was Lilith, the one who had branded Jack’s face with the sign of the Vault.

“Never thought I’d see your damned face again,” Lilith gritted through her teeth.

“You’re not dead yet only because of Zero here,” the dark figure flashed a digital zero upon being mentioned, “Zero thinks there is more to you than it seems.” 

“Thank you.” Timothy muttered, nodding at the dark figure. Everyone in the room raised their eyebrows. 

“Did that sound insincere? Damn the Hyperion engineers, they can’t do anything right, can they?”

Bad move. He sounded exactly like the asshole he was trying not to be.

“Sorry, force of habit.” 

“Habit? Bad at not being yourself, Jackass?”

The irony.

“You don’t have a pocket watch to disguise you, and there isn’t a mask on your face, and there is no Vault symbol, so Zero got us to call Athena. This better be worth it, we’re ruining her honeymoon with this.”

“Honey moon?” it was Timothy’s turn to raise his eyebrows. Her and Janey Springs? “Wait, are they here?” he blurted out, a sheepish smile appearing on his face. It was awkward for all of them. Nobody expected Jack’s face to be able to produce anything besides arrogance.

Athena walked into the room without saying a word, her stare as cold as ever. But she seemed much more invigorated than Timothy had ever seen her. Being with Janey was doing her a lot of good. At least it wasn’t so terrible for everyone…

“Athena, can you tell us why we shouldn’t feed him to the skags?” Lilith asked.

Timothy and Athena stared at each other for what felt like eternity.

“Prove to me that you aren’t Jack.”

_Fuck. Oh. What do I say? Oh.  
Idea._

_She’ll kill me._

“Can everyone leave first?” he knew the answer, but it didn’t hurt to ask out of courtesy.

“No.” Athena said, raising her hand, silencing everyone before they could get angry.

“I’m sorry.” Timothy took a deep breath and shut his eyes, trying to lean away, expecting to be punched. 

“I once walked into you and Janey using your Oz kits to have s-”

Athena’s hand clamped around his mouth. He opened his eyes to see her cheeks turn as red as Lilith’s hair. Zero’s display was flashing between a grin and LOL.

“He’s not Jack.”


	4. Suffocation Blues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello reader!
> 
> This story doesn't have an outline. I know where it begins, I know where it ends, the rest just happens when I sit down to write. This is my first attempt at writing after a long period of stagnation so I'm just letting the story take me where it wishes. I am very glad that you've taken time out of your day to read this, and I'm even more glad if you enjoy it! If you do, please let me know about it! I'd love to hear your suggestions about where the plot should go, etc.
> 
> Without further ado...

With little ceremony Athena untied Timothy from the target board. His ankles gave out the moment they touched the ground, turning sideways and making him trip, landing on his face with a loud thud. He could hear someone snicker. And before he knew it, a strong hand had grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and pulled him back up.

“You’re sure?” Lilith asked, a tinge of disappointment in her voice. Everyone wanted to kill Jack, seven times over if they could, and him not being Jack was ruining their day a little bit more.  
“Yes.”  
“I still don’t see why we shouldn’t kill him.” 

The room went silent. Brick’s guns were pointed at his stomach, Mordecai’s trigger finger was twitching. Timothy’s limbs became heavier, his back slumped and he stared down at his toes. The tension was seeping through every crack in the walls, through every pore of his skin.

“Do it already, then.” 

Zap. The voice modulator malfunctioned again. This time was different - it wasn’t one painful shock, it was continuous. The muscles in his throat contracted, making him suffocate. As a reflex, he wrapped his hands around his neck and gasped for air, with no luck. He coughed and dry heaved, trying to cough the modulator up. It was pointless, as it was firmly attached to his skin, but at this moment he could only form one coherent thought at a time.

 _I don’t want to die._  
The world around became even more of a blur. There was screaming, running, sharp pains in his throat as he threw himself against the walls. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t, he couldn’t--

“Stop, little man.” Brick said right next to his ear as Timothy could feel his feet losing contact with the floor. Someone was holding him in the air, crushing him in the process. He made one last desperate attempt to gasp for air.

The flow of oxygen returned to his brain, switching on his senses. His gag reflex was the first to awake, as he promptly vomited...onto someone's hand. There were fingers in his mouth. Not his fingers. He could taste stomach acid, gasoline and white spirit. 

“Do I need to remind you all that I ain’t a real doctor?” a different male voice said somewhere near him. He opened his eyes and saw a pair of black boots walking away from him. 

“Well, whatever you did, worked.” a relieved sigh came from Lilith.

“Y’all should clean him up and bring him around to me as soon as you’re done here.”

“Sure thing, Zed.”

And yet again someone yanked him up on his feet.

“Can you please stop doing that?” Timothy whined out, brushing the dust and vomit off of his clothes.

“Only when you stop falling over.” responded Athena, “Keep your back straight.”

“Yeah, thanks. Kind of hard to do that when… Never mind. Sorry. Thanks.”

“Okay, not Jack, care to explain what the hell that was?”

“Instead of a cloaking device, I had full facial surgery that turned me into Jack. Including a voice modulator. It malfunctions a lot. Never this bad.” he tried to explain, trying to keep it brief in fears of another seizure coming up.

“Who are you?” asked Mordecai.

“I am not legally allowed to tell you that, but it rhymes with Jimothy.” Timothy’s answer was a reflex by now.

“Jack’s dead, your contract is over. Cough it up, Jimothy.” 

“Timothy Lawrence. I needed to pay off my student loans. And then...This happened.” he gestured at himself. He probably wasn’t the first or last person to end up in his own vomit over debt, but it didn’t make it any less pathetic.  
“Mordecai, Zero, Brick, come here for a moment. You two, stay here.” Lilith said and walked outside, leaving Timothy and Athena alone.

“So…You and Janey, huh? Congratulations!” he said, “And sorry about saying what I said, I had no other ideas.”

“It’s fine, just don’t bring it up again.”

“Sorry for ruining your honeymoon like this…”

“I was getting bored of vacationing anyhow.” she said and... Smiled. 

Athena, the badass gladiator who could break every bone in his body with her hands tied to her knees, smiled at a vomit-clad copy of Handsome Jack. 

“I think I know someone who could help you, Timothy. I’m not going to let them kill you.”

“Why?” 

“You’re not Jack.”

Timothy felt all fuzzy and warm inside. That might just have been some strange case of internal bleeding, but he decided to think of it as him feeling glad rather than about to die. He wished he could hug Athena, but between the vomit and the fact that she didn’t seem like the most hug prone person he decided to only smile.

“Alright, Timothy, we won’t kill you. But you owe us an explanation.” Lilith’s voice boomed through the room.


	5. Announcement

Hello reader! I know this story just started, but since this was only an exercise to get my gears turning, I didn't have a set goal for it. Now, during these two days of not writing I've had an idea on how to expand this into a proper story. So, for now I will be marking this as complete, and in the (hopefully) near future, I will be writing it from the begging, incorporating these chapters into larger ones. If you liked where these chapters were going, then I encourage you to follow me either here or @elpislost on tumblr where I will be posting about it so you don't miss it when it pops up. See you then!


	6. Authors Note

Just wanted to tell you that I'm rewriting this, and that the new version can be found on my profile, titled as Elpis Lost. The first few chapters will just be rewrites of the same events already presented here, and then there will be new stuff.


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